The European Union Just Squeaked By

Is Western liberalism safe with Macron’s win, or are more and more Europeans really migrating to the right?

May 9, 2017, 7:30 AM

On this episode of The E.R., Max Boot joins us to discuss his new book "The Road Not Taken."

On this week’s first episode of The E.R., David Rothkopf, Rosa Brooks, Ed Luce, and Julie Smith discuss the French election results, what it means for the rest of the European Union and, more broadly, the world. With Macron claiming a big victory over the weekend, many are now breathing a sigh of relief that France didn’t put a far-right leader in office. But even so, it is still disturbing that one-third of France’s population voted for Marine Le Pen, and the panel argues that this is part of a deeper-rooted structural crisis that is likely to get worse before it gets better.

The E.R. team then takes a step back and looks at the future of the EU as a whole and the U.S. relationship with its European allies and NATO. With Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, and France having recently rejected populist far-right movements, can the European project get back on track — acting as a global check to other unbalanced powers? Maybe even throwing some newfound mojo back at the United States?

Rosa Brooks is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and teaches international law, national security, and constitutional law at Georgetown University. She is the author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. Follow her on Twitter: @brooks_rosa.

Ed Luce is the Financial Times’s chief U.S. commentator and columnist based in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, out June 13. Follow him on Twitter: @EdwardGLuce.

Julie Smith is a contributing editor to FP’s Shadow Government blog. She is also a senior fellow and director of the strategy and statecraft program at the Center for a New American Security, and was previously the deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. Follow her on Twitter: @Julie_C_Smith.